Check out the hottest discussions from the previous week in the FFXIV General Forum.

This is going to be a shorter Hot Read Thursday than usual, because I was up late last night posting news about the battle system announcement. Pretty good stuff, isn't it? Two of this week's featured threads are specifically about the battle system overhaul, while the third thread is from someone wanting to know the current state of the game. Normally I give these threads a bit more of an introduction, but today I feel like diving right in.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Reading the words of Lead Battle Planner Akihiko Matsui makes me want to jump up and down like Tom Cruise on Oprah's couch. After previous debates about auto attack, I am somewhat surprised by the seemingly unanimous support of everything Matsui has laid out for us. The only element of his whole plan which seems to raise any kind of concern is the inclusion of an enmity indicator during battle. If the first battle system changes are put in place in June, then we could conceivably be seeing further updates occuring through most of the summer. At the end of the day though, I don't really care -- I'm just excited to see the game's battle system take a huge step forward.

The development team's plan for implementing traditional jobs into Final Fantasy XIV is what I'm most excited about, and this poster seems pretty excited, too. There are so many ways this can be done; this poster created a list of the different jobs that might someday have to be leveled to unlock various other traditional jobs. What a great way to allow for customization while also leaving the existing classes incredibly useful. My biggest question now is whether I can expect to see a red mage job brought into the game?

To put it mildly, the state of the game right now feels much better than it seems from the outside. Yes, Final Fantasy game is still an underdeveloped game that was released way too early, with only a fraction of the playerbase remaining from the several thousand who started on launch day. The OP of this thread voices concerns about too much grinding, lack of content and the surplus experience points system -- and things Yoshi-P has said he plans on correcting. Final Fantasy XIV still has a ways to go, but for now, things are feeling pretty good.